


the ghost in your head

by satterthwaite



Category: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), The Hour
Genre: AU - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Altered Memories, Angst, F/M, Lacuna Inc, Spanish Civil War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 00:46:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satterthwaite/pseuds/satterthwaite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Freddie's death and the discovery of Sophia's disappearance, Lix would rather have her memories erased than having to face life as it is - without telling anyone about it. Out of spite, Randall decides to do the same, before realizing he cannot imagine a life where she isn't there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set after 2x06 - Freddie is dead and everyone tries to cope with it, succeeding more or less. Randall's POV for the time being, though I hope I'll be able to include Lix's at some point.  
> Title from the song "Spanish Sahara" by Foals.

When he passed her in the hallway, it seemed like she saw through him, not stopping to talk nor look, like she would always do. Randall turned around, puzzled, but thought her mind was simply busy with foreign matters, a distant war and a faraway crisis. He went back to his office, rearranging, classifying, OCDing through the afternoon. He would go to see Bel before leaving.

The small, creamy piece of paper had been left on her desk in the morning. Through the thick haze of mourning and grief that seemed to linger on her mind since Freddie’s death, Bel had discarded it at first, letting it drown amongst the Telex papers and Sissy’s handwritten notes for this or that meeting, before stumbling upon it as she played absentminded with the wires of her telephone. Between her red-painted fingernails, the cursive letters appeared black on beige.

“Dear Miss Rowley,

Alexis Storm has had Randall Brown & Sophia Malfrand erased from her memory. Please never mention their relationship to her again.

Thank you.”

Her eyes widened and she put down the receiving end, breathe gone. A voice went “hello, hello ?” at the other end, but her ears had gone deaf. She blinked once, twice, thrice, read it again out loud. Erased from her memory – how was that even possible ? The card emerged from a certain Lacuna Inc, based in Knightsbridge – Bel would have to ask Sissy about this. She stood there for a while, trying to figure out what to do, how to act – she hadn’t noticed a single change in Lix’s behaviour, but then again she had seen her in the same room as Randall for the whole week. The knock on the door drew her out of her reverie.

“Miss Rowley, I wanted to let you know I’m out. Don’t stay too late – the show is tomorrow.”

She slowly raised her head, shock still on display on her features. The Head of News cocked his head, furrowed his brow. “Is something wrong ?” he asked, spotting the card at last, before Bel grossly put her hand over it.

“Nothing” she finally mumbled, and though she tried and act calm, the shaking of her hand when she wiped away a strand of her hair couldn’t go unnoticed. “I’m just tired.” Fake smile.

The man could not so easily be fooled. He reached for his produced behind her desk, putting a hand on her shoulder in the best reassuring way he knew. His eyes fell upon the words : storm, so, relationship. “What is it ?” Bel had never been quite the good liar, she was not one of those who could easily hide. With guilty look she lifted her fingers, one two three, revealing the deed. Heart skipped a beat.

At first, the emptiness swallowed him whole, taking his breath away, red veil upon his eyes and for the first time in a long while, Randall felt drunk on nothingness. Then angst sprung forward, as if his whole being spat it out of him, fist clenching and the overwhelming need to rearrange things, send them flying across rooms. It is high time he got home, before falling in the great black pit of his manic.

The road seemed nothing but a giant black snake uncoiling in front of him, but always ready to snap at his face and tear him apart. What do the psychologists say ? Imagine yourself in a peaceful place, breathing breathing. His jaw felt painful, teeth crushing against each other and knuckles white against the wheel. He thought he might have crashed into another car, but his mind floated in a mist of both unconsciousness and painful awareness of everything surrounding him. Erased erased erased. The words echoed in deafening bangs in his ears, and when he finally laid in his bed, his limbs ached to the bones.

He didn’t think he had it in him to face her the next day, to stand near her in the small room above the set, watching Hector behind his desk. Yet he woke up all the same, headed for Lime Grove, ready to do his job.

He thought he caught her smile at him when she turned around the corner of the teal-painted hallway, a flash of white teeth between red shattering his heart. He swallowed hard, mouth dry, and called for the meeting in the Newsroom.

There she stood, trousers and white shirt, butterfly-shaped glasses sliding on her nose and dark hair enhancing her deep-blue eyes – baby eyes. She was holding a stack of papers, reading from them from time to time when asked about what should come next on The Hour. Randall watched her, passionate and fighting for what she thought should be top priority – he didn’t always agree, yet dared not speak a word to her. His body was turning into a kettle, blood boiling in his veins as everyone’s presence was slowly becoming unbearable.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen, I think everybody has something to work on now ! 6 hours till we’re live !” Bel’s dismissal felt like a relief, and he turned to her, a thanking look on his face – she smiled, understanding.

His heart clenched when Lix came up to him, smiling, and his hands crept up to his tie, rearranging it once twice thrice. The shaking couldn’t be controlled, and she raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“Mr Brown, I have been immensely rude for not introducing myself to you” she began, extending her hand towards him. “I am Lix Storm, Foreign Desk as you probably already know.” It stood awkwardly in the air for what seemed like an eternity.

“How could you —“ Randall finally breathed, low voice and curt tone. His teeth gritted, and the look of surprise on her face was genuine. “How could you do this to me, to her ?! Were you always that fucking selfish ? Were you ? Whenever things go bad you run away and hide behind your so-called wall of haughtiness and your know-it-all appearances, but you are just as fucking weak as the rest of us, aren’t you Lix ?! You are nothing but a sad, little girl who needs to go hiding under her mother’s skirts !”

He stopped, facing her shocked features, people frozen around them. “I—“ she began, trembling, before Bel came and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Come, Lix.” This was perhaps the first time anyone had silence Alexis Storm.

Randall would not stop at that – if she had erased him, he would do the same. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While being treated, Randall takes a deep plunge into his memories.

The thought of strangers going around his flat while he would be asleep was somehow very disturbing, but if that was the cost of it all, then let it be done with it. His angst was still burning in him, hammering against his choking heart, and he couldn’t quite see clearly nor have any judgement towards the situation he was finding himself in.  
One could say Randall was a cold-blooded animal… except when it came to Lix. In her hands laid the power of changing him from toes to head, and he wasn’t even sure she was aware of it. It didn’t matter right now – she would be gone come morning.

~~~

The room iss hot, heaviness falling upon his shoulders, and as the faint sound of a gramophone comes to him from God knows where, he knows he is drifting inside his memories.  
This is Spain 1938 – perhaps 1939, he never had quite the head for dates, the dampness of July clinging to every piece of furniture as sweat trickled down his brow. From the bedroom comes the sound of clothes being thrown in haste. Randall approaches with care, and his eyes meet the vision of an up-to-her-eyes pregnant Lix angrily folding shirts that aren’t hers and sending them flying straight into the open suitcase on the bed. “Go to Grenada – I don’t care !” she shouts with angst. She is barefooted, her swollen feet only tolerating shoes when it came down to the strict necessity. Now she is reaching for his trousers as he stands speechless, his mind racing as he remembers what is going to happen.  
“Aren’t you going to say anything ?!” she stops for a moment, eyes getting watery as she stared at him. He opens his mouth, not sure about what to say.  
“They’re erasing you, Lix. Just like you erased me. By tomorrow morning you will be gone and my life will be much better. Now the baby is going to kick you and you will fall on the bed.”  
“What?!” she says, before “ouch” and a hand to her swollen belly, the need to sit back and breathe, soothing that little being through the skin. And as he steps forward, trying to place his hand above hers, she is gone in the blink of an eye and Fred Astaire keeps singing to put it on the Ritz in the faraway distance.

~~~

The sound is louder now, there are so many people around them, but Lix is right here, next to him, knees touching under the table and her fingertips tapping to the music. She has a bright smile on her face, as she shouts some Spanish words to encourage those who dare to dance, before turning back to Randall, cheeks flushed.  
“This is the moment where you kiss, darling, remember ?” she speaks loudly to cover all else, and almost unwillingly he is leaning forward to press his lips against hers, then her hands in his hair and his on her waist, a flash forward until he is pressing her against the wall in the hallway, dark and gloomy and hot, an old building in the centre of Madrid, almost falling to pieces. All the journalists are packed here – his or hers, it doesn’t matter, they’re only floors apart. She is laughing and moaning against his mouth as she tries to find the knob to the door in her back, and when she does they both stumble into the tiny room where undergarments are drying on display, and she chuckles when she realizes it’s hers. Lix draws him by his tie, expert hands unbuttoning his shirt at the speed of light.  
“You were always a little astonished at my skills, weren’t you ?” she whispers playfully. Yet he can’t really see her lips moving, and he understands his own mind’s projection of Lix is speaking through him. He kisses her again, and again and again until his body wonders how it had lived until now without her own form to fulfil his. Without even realizing she has dragged him into the bedroom and they fall on the bed which is barely wide enough for the two of them, creaking like a dying animal, and she is laughing once again as she wiggles out of her bra. If his mind had been clear, he could have composed poetry about those breasts, a thousands words long about the wonders of her skins and the maps of her bones.  
But now is not the time for words, as she gets him out of his shirt, throwing him away and it makes him shiver, the chaos she creates where she is. His fingers are itching but the haze she creates in his mind at the same time, a warm cotton enveloping his mind, the heady scent of her perfume annihilating all senses. He wants to plunge into her.  
Lix is straddling him and he gladly lets her lead as she removes his glasses and covers his face in whiskey-scented kisses, the rocking of her hips slowly driving him over the edge, and he wishes she would get out of her pants already. For once he blames her for not wearing skirts or dresses, like every other woman, knowing he wouldn’t be in her bed if she was like every other woman. He lets her do her work the way she wants it.  
He settles his hand on her hips as she slides down on him, a moan concealed in the back of her throat and her head thrown back, before he goes on wandering about, following the lines on display, the bones structure that stuck out here and there – she is skinny, he realizes, food being strictly rationed. He sits up and embraces her waist as her moves go frantic, legs wound iron-tight and head buried in the crook of his neck as she cries out and shakes and sobs.  
That’s when he realizes he’ll never remember this, and he wishes they’d let him keep that, just that. She is gone, and the bed is empty.

~~~

He is holding her hair as her head is bent over a chamber pot, and she is throwing up. Her whole body is shaken with convulsions as she sobs with pain.  
“Oh, Randall, did you really have to remember that ?” she grumbles, face down. “I wouldn’t mind you erasing this memory of me…” It’s only his own mind speaking.  
Morning sicknesses are worst than everything he had thought, and there isn’t a single day where Lix doesn’t have to lie down on the tile in the bathroom to keep down the nauseas. She sits back on her heels, a feeble smile gracing her lips as she pushes back the strands of hair stuck to her forehead.  
“It’s worth it, isn’t it ? I’m not going through all this pain for nothing, right ?” she laughs almost lightly, as her hand gently strokes the light swell of her belly.  
“I don’t want you gone” he finally mumbles, words tumbling down his mouth, and she only smiles. “I know. But it’s too late now…” Her hands reaches for him, and it fades away.

~~~

They often make love, but never in the morning – Lix is a sleeper, and he learns that one can’t bother her lest he faces death. “You wanted me bad, didn’t you anyways ?” her voice echoes, amused.  
Never mind – he’ll sleep besides her, his arms around her and their legs entangled.

~~~

She is running – in spite of sickness and heaviness and dampness, she is running through the streets, camera in hands, and she shouts above her shoulder “Hurry up, old man !” The cheers of an angry mob come to his ears, and he is almost frightened, for the first time. Yet he knows there isn’t a soul who could prevent Alexis Storm from throwing herself into the midst of the battle, snapping her pictures and elbowing her way through the crowd, shouting in Spanish. He follows as best as he can, crying after her to wait for him, and he barely has the time to catch her hand before she is swallowed by the people gathered there.  
He holds on tightly to her, and she looks behind her shoulder to check he is still there, from time to time. She barely has the space to unsheathe her camera to capture the moment, she is clutching Randall’s hand as the crowd moves and they are being crushed, crushed, crushed under the weight of expectations they don’t particularly share. At one point he is pressed against her and she laughs, nervously.  
But people move forward, and the stream becomes a river that carries her away, and now they are arm-length apart and their fingers cling to each other as he shouts “Lix, Lix, Lix !” and he doesn’t know if it’s the real memory, or his mind shouting after her not to disappear from his life.  
“Lix, Lix, don’t be gone ! Don’t be gone!” He thinks she screams too, but he can’t hear her as their hands fall apart, and the landscape fades to black, once again.

~~~

Her figure is walking towards him, leaning forward, red-lipsticked lips, too much perfume the scent is strong, stronger, strongest. His head is spinning – he will wake up soon now, he will he will and she will be gone gone gone. He feels her cold hand on his shoulders, his torso, she laughs. “It is over” he says, gulping down the possible tears.  
“Well, we’ll always have Paris” she whispers playfully, and when he blinks, she is gone, once more.  
Randall has always hated “Casablanca”. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter was really painful to write because Eternal Sunshine is a very visual movie and I tried to render the effect of the memories collapsing but it was really hard and I hope it's not too awful !


End file.
